


you're the author of this nightmare (you're the engineer of our distress)

by AQuarterPast



Series: you’re the emperor of nowhere (and no one gets out alive) [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22549807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AQuarterPast/pseuds/AQuarterPast
Summary: The lack of recognition in his eyes when he looks at her is maddening — this man ruined her life, killed her family, turned her into who she is today— he should at least know her name (know her face, know the sadness and mistrust etched all over it, and that he put it there).
Relationships: Jyn Erso & Orson Krennic, Jynnic
Series: you’re the emperor of nowhere (and no one gets out alive) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622443
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	you're the author of this nightmare (you're the engineer of our distress)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prologue to a series of works. I've been sitting on it for quite some time (because I wasn't certain if I liked it), but decided to put it out there for others to judge. As with most of my works, this is 'living', in the sense that I will very likely alter the frills around the plot beats, but not the plot beats themselves. So, I suppose, if you really like it, save off a copy? 
> 
> Series title and part title both come from "Emperor of Nowhere" by Kate Havnevik. 
> 
> This series asks the question, what if Orson Krennic had his own agenda inside the Empire? It doesn't ask if he's a good man, since he's already killed millions at this point through his actions, but rather if he were making such large, involuntary sacrifices with the goal to bring down the Empire. 
> 
> This small chapter introduces us to his defection to the Rebellion. Deeper looks into his motives and eventual 'awakening' will be address in additional stand-alone and chaptered fics in the series. Overall series will be an eventual Jyn/Krennic oriented piece. Lots of bumps along the way.
> 
> Not Beta'd

i

There is a brush of fabric, white against white, as the men stride pass one another and then stop. It isn't inconspicuous, what they are doing in this well-frequented corridor, but there is no time for subterfuge now.Things must be done, and they must be done yesterday.While there is no love lost between them (which is captured with clarity in two sets of narrowed eyes),there is an uneasy trust that was created through nearly two decades of a single secret kept.One borne of two young men navigating the shifting politics of the dying Republic, then deviating drastically in their chosen paths as they attempted to achieve the same goal (andyet somehow always knowing what that was).

“He failed.”

_I had to kill him_ , goes unspoken, an undertone to the words that stretches across wide, thin lips on a pale face.

A disc exchanges hands.

“Get this to whomever you can. I'm compromised, so you must act with haste.”

“How do they know?”, dark eyes furrow with concern, timelines are being shifted.

“Communication logs are audited. I haven't made contact since confronting Erso for leaking information. Even if he doesn't fully understand the implications of my absence, Tarkin will take the opportunity to have me killed.Bail,” the name is spoken with little familiarity, but with enough urgency to rend the lisp audible in his next words, “he's always wanted the Death Star and now he has it.He will accelerate his timelines in order to prove its capabilities to the Emperor. Expect…great losses. Finish this soon, or you'll lose everything.”

“Let me handle that now.”(then, added as almost an afterthought) “Where will you go?”

Blue eyes dart suspiciously around the hall, focused on the far corner, as if expecting his end to linger just beyond it, “I don't know. Both sides will want me dead, and those who don't care about this war will want to collect the bounty.”

There's a moment of consideration, as if the senator doesn't want to speak again, “Yavin 4. Take your copy of this,” Bail tilts the disc, as he is entirely certain a copy has been made (he is correct), “Tell them I sent you. They will interrogate you, but I will pass on my support, with any luck they'll give you the opportunity to fight and die for them.”

“Instead of executing me outright,” there is bemusement in the tone, curiosity as well. He has little other choice. They want the same things, even if they went about them in different ways.

“They might just still.”

“It's a gamble.”

Bail Organa thinks of the small disc, its contents the wave that will shift the tide of the war, “It looks to me to me that you're a gambling man, Director Krennic.”

ii

Two things happen in quick succession, and Jyn Erso feels an instinctual need to hit something (of all people, K-2 senses this shift in her demeanor and knocks a glass off a nearby stack of transport cases. When it crashes to the floor, and she and Cassian look back at him, the droid shrugs sardonically, 'oops.'It goes unnoticed by nearly all, and she turns away without reacting). These are those things:

Alarms sound as a lander docks just beyond the temple ruins. The response is immediate and Director Krennic is dragged from the cockpit unceremoniously by Merrick. The ridiculous cape he wears wraps around him, as if trying to shield the Director’s staggering legs, but only manages to look pathetic in the effort. He is not struggling, but Krennic is breathing heavily. When he tries to speak, a lucky man puts a fist into his gut, winding him. His coughing is cut off by rough handling as he's dragged into the main bay.

Then the news comes in that Alderaann has been destroyed by the weapon her father helped build. Jyn, who had tried and failed to rouse the support of these rebels, just a single day before, looks at their faces with growing fury, “We could have stopped this!”

There are murmurs, and then a hoarse voice cuts through the sound, “No, you couldn't have.”

Krennic, bound, roughed up, and scowling, has finally found his breath. The fact that he isn't dead is a mystery yet to be solved.

“What is this?” Mon Mothma utters while coming up on the scene, falling between perplexed and frustrated by the presence of their enemy.

“He said Bail sent him,” the lucky man with the quick fist says.

“Of course he said Organa sent him, he's lying!” Cassian insists.

“No,” Krennic says vehemently, spittle nearly flying, “You were supposed to steal those plans on your own.Erso was meant to give them to you, but left traceable scraps in the system and got caught. Do you think the Empire would let you access Scarif with that knowledge? No. I gave them to Organa, and he sent me here with the copy.”

“Bail Organa is dead,” Mon Mothma says, her composure a thing of wonder. It’s as if she’s telling him they’ve run out of cleaning detergent.

(This is when K-2 decides to break the tension by shattering glass, it does not work, and Cassian signals for him to stop trying to be the damned comic relief).

This news causes something to flicker across Krennic’s face, but it is unreadably opaque, “I still have the copy.”

“He’s lying,” this time it's Jyn who interrupts, parroting her friend, “It's clearly a trap.”

The lack of recognition in his eyes when he looks at her is maddening — this man ruined her life, killed her family, turned her into who she is today— he should at least know her name (know her face, know the sadness and mistrust etched all over it and that he put it there).

He speaks directly at her, even though he doesn't know who she is, voice nearly snide, “I not only made the least elegant, most convoluted, and wholly impractical weapon in the entire galaxy, but convinced the Emperor to invest a monumental amount of resources in its construction, and you think I'm lying about knowing the flaw that Galen Erso so kindly built into it for me?The man who fled the empire, trusted to build it a weapon without fault? Come on!I was so transparent they should have killed me a decade ago!”

Krennic looks around wildly when no one accepts his tirade, “You think sitting here in ruins, fighting a poor man's war, is the only way to dismantle an empire?”

“You made a weapon that works,” Mothma says (deliberating, considering).

“Yes, and now it's your job to blow it up!”

Even as he's being dragged away, Mothma seems to be considering his words. Jyn's hands fidget at her sides (she wants to kill him, but there will be time for that later).

“What do we do?” She asks instead.

“We determine if he's telling the truth.”

iii

He is.

In what feels like no time, Leia Organa appears in the hangar bay. Behind her, she drags along two droids, an upstart kid with uncertain but proud eyes, and a smuggler. The less said about that swaggering brand of man, the better. It takes Jyn a moment to register that the hairy giant bringing up the rear is a Wookie, a race she's heard of but has never seen. She blinks, turns away, and helps Cassian load power-cells into his ship. Vaguely, she's aware that this woman marching her way through the area, delivering information, rallying support, has just lost her entire planet. There have been whispers since Alderaan was destroyed…that their last hope might be a girl with no world (no family, no tangible past anymore).

Word makes it around that they have the specs. The veracity of which is unknown, but she remembers the words of her father in the message he left her. It must be. That they are identical to the specs that Krennic brought only exasperates her further. The weakness sounds so much the same.

Then the horrifying beautiful sphere enters orbit. Fighters scramble with a plan based off of untrusted blueprints because they have to (this isn't a game) and before long the weapon is destroyed. That upstart kid is ripped from his x-wing and carried around on the shoulders of a swarm of cheering rebel fighters, and Jyn wonders what she's even doing here.

Later, as everyone celebrates, she finds Krennic in his cell. The white cape and overcoat have since been removed, the entire ensemble replaced with plain, dark long-sleeve coveralls. They are too large for his frame, and hang off his arms in a peculiar way (his hair remains perfectly coifed, as if willed into place, despite being unwashed). When Jyn enters, he's crouched with his back against the far wall, forgoing the plain cot frame he's meant to sleep on, arms on his knees and studying the floor. Again, she realizes wants to kill him (could kill him; it alarms her how much she could kill him) but he looks up when she enters and his expression is blank. In that moment, she knows then that all the pain he's caused her had never occurred to him.

(She hates him more for this)

'The weapon was destroyed.”

'They'll make another,” he says simply, with a delicate shrug, “they'll find the flaw and fix it. My only consolation is that Tarkin was on this one.” He looks away then,the tenseness of his jaw loosening as he comes to some conclusion that amuses him, “You're not ranked. Is this a pleasure call for you? Rough up the prisoner in celebration?”

Jyn almost huffs (almost, she won’t give him the satisfaction). She settles for getting to the point, “I'm Jyn Erso. You murdered my parents.”

The information seems to register, his pale brows twitching and dipping in recollection, but also confusion as if he cannot believe that all this time has actually gone by, 'The last time I saw you, you wore braids.”

There is a beat, as she remembers. Her mother falling. Her father leaving. She thought this man hadn't seen her as she ran away.

“Why are you here?” It’s all Jyn knows how to ask (what game are you playing? what makes you think you have the right? What else do you want to destroy?)

He considers his words, and answers cryptically, “Sometimes, the sleeper has to wake.”

It is followed by a faint smile on his twisted mouth, then a frown.

Before Jyn can respond, Krennic studies the floor again, letting her know that he won't speak to her again, won't answer any more of her questions. Whether it’s because he doesn't think she deserves answers, or because he's considering his impending fate, she doesn't care. It's all the same to her. As she leaves, her hand skimming the blaster on her hip, she hears him say, “You look like your mother.”

She pauses, briefly, at the door (her fingers graze the hilt and then slip away), “I wouldn't know; I can't remember her face.”

“I'm sorry.”

Jyn leaves without reacting to his words.

(She'll stay with this rebellion, if it means she's the one who gets to kill him some day.)

iv

He spends the first two days in his cell pacing, footsteps staccato on the stone floor. Snide, angry words are on the tip of his tongue when rebellion guards bring him food and water. The words never leave his mouth. Krennic isn't keen on taking another strike to the stomach, but the uncharitable thoughts are written all over his face. He expects them to fail in their test; they know that he does.

When this under-trained band of fighters manage to destroy his life's work, he stills. Just so, Krennic now has reassurance that he has not banished himself from the Empire for nothing. Perhaps there was more work he could have done to weaken it within its institutions, but there is little use thinking in counterfactuals. Now, he must divest his old uniform(no matter, they burned it; he never wanted to wear it again anyway) and fit into another in order to survive. Insults, for he will give them, must be tempered. Arrogance must be softened. Petty rage mellowed. These are not the ways of the Rebellion — as far as they helped his climb up the rungs ofthe Empire, they will dig his grave here.

When the Erso girl enters his cell, he sees the dispassionate rage in her eyes. Before he knows who she is, he can tell he is the reason she's lost whatever it was that drove her to this place (put that blaster in her holster, the steel in the set of her jaw). His snideness shifts into amused self-deprecation, into lame apology. He does remember Lyra's face, the hatred she felt toward him is near identical to that her daughter, Jyn it would seem, also feels. Galen had always had a softness toward his oldest friend, even when betrayed. This girl does not take after him.

(When she leaves him alive, he suspects that one day she will be the one to kill him.)

It is three days after this, when the rebels have determined what the aftermath of their attack will be, that he is visited in his cell by Mon Mothma, Gial Ackbar, and Leia Organa (he knows their faces from Empire intelligence, but not their steady resolve, their slow determination to get the job done). The latter is wearing an expression that suggests this is his turning point.

“My father explained you to me before he died,” there is grief there, however deeply hidden,and he imagines that it will shape every decision the princess of a destroyed planet will make until the day she dies, “and I've relayed his message. What we need from you now is a reason to keep you alive.”

Krennic stands from his crouched position (his knees audibly cracking from the strain) and notices the way they step back from him. His hands, typically gloved, are bared and held out palms angled toward them, placating.

“Knowledge, mostly. I’m no great fighter, those days are behind me. I can fly, but I'm not a combat pilot,” he concedes, “but, I know the Empire more than most. I know Vader. I know the Emperor. I know where the unrest is at its greatest, the weaknesses in their fleet capabilities, and their flagging resources.”

He remembers what he said to Jyn Erso before he knew she was Jyn Erso, “I know that they will make another Death Star.”

Ackbar remains stoic (as if Krennic could read the man’s expression anyway). The women exchange glances, and he knows that he won't be executed.

Not today.

(That doesn't mean, as they lead him from his cell to a room where he can be debriefed, that any of the dozens of people glaring at him openly and from under their lashes won't take the first opportunity to try).


End file.
